Mold Attacks!

If Gilbert school officials had played straight, Mesquite Junior High kids and teachers would've run for their lives.

Comments (0) By Robert Nelson Thursday, Oct 13 2005

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For now, though, everyone involved with Mesquite Junior High is looking to the upcoming Gilbert schools bond issue. If voters approve the bond proposal, more than $4.5 million will go toward renovating the Mesquite complex.

Corn is trying a renovation of his own.

Peter Scanlon

Mesquite Junior High in Gilbert. Black mold could've become the school's mascot.

Peter Scanlon

Jeff Corn says the school building made him deathly ill.

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Amid bouts with pain and depression, he says he's regained the strength to "earnestly try to fight this stuff in my body." He plans to use some of the money from selling his house to place himself in that toxin treatment center in Dallas.

Meantime, he is self-medicating. For example, one basic treatment attempted by some toxicologists for purging the body of toxins is frequent saunas.

So, when he's up for it, Corn has begun running again -- in the heat of the day.

"I've got to try to fight this," he says. "It may not work, but I'm going to give it my best shot."

As for his old school, Corn simply hopes that Gilbert officials will finally give their best shot to helping other teachers and students who were made ill by years of moldering decay at Mesquite.

"I have this terrible fear it's going to start catching up with others who came into that school later than I did," Corn says. "What makes me so mad is this could have been stopped a long time ago. But instead, [the school district] just let the problem grow."